Bricks

Inspiration Wednesday - Hit the Bricks

Things are getting tense. Dave has been working non stop for two weeks clearing his house and garage out, mostly having to work in record breaking heat and humidity. He is running on fumes and pain. He's at the point where he just throwing stuff away. The closing for his house is in two days and everything has to be cleared out.

He has been collecting old building materials for the past 30 years of his career as a contractor who restores historic properties. Some of it has been sold, and some of it carted off to storage for the restoration of our beach house. One of the things he has collected and amassed is old bricks.

What's so special about a pile of 2000 bricks? Well they are mostly "soft reds" and many made by the St. Joe Brick Works in Louisiana. The much sought after "hard tans" and "soft reds" used bricks coming from demolished New Orleans structures were originally manufactured at St. Joe Brick Works and other St. Tammany Parish brick yards in existence before the turn of the century.
These used bricks are beloved by home renovators and can fetch between $2.50 - $4. per brick.

So when Dave told me he was just going to abandon his pile of bricks, just leave them in his yard for the new owners to deal with, my heart sank. He really is hurting for him to even think of such a thing. I got busy trying to find a solution. I found a mover who will go and get them and move them to our yard in BSL. It will cost $800. I found a brick company specializing in selling antique bricks that would buy them for 60 cents each ($1200.) and take them away from Dave's yard. To buy them again if you could even find them (they are getting more and more rare), would cost upwards of $5000. So I have made an executive decision to pay the movers to take the bricks to BSL. I know Dave would be very sorry to leave them behind, and I know one day they will look amazing as a patio or walkway at our new place. I also love the New Orleans connection to our Mississippi house. 

Dave and I love old bricks

One day we hope to a have a pretty brick patio

Ignatz - poster boy for bricks

A brick walkway up to the front porch would be perfect

Dave has a pile of 2000 vintage soft red New Orleans bricks that he has collected for 20 years

Just dreaming of the day we can use the reclaimed bricks

Used St. Joe bricks are highly prized since they are no longer made

More brick walkway inspiration

A picket fence and a brick walkway - YES!

Krazy Kat and Ignatz always make me think of bricks

Digging It Up

We did the first home improvement! Well actually we hired Brent Moralle with his big digging machine to clear the yard of all the overgrowth. Now we can really see the house and Love Shack and how big the yard is (it's big). Click on images to see them bigger.

All the overgrowth has been cleared away. I am so happy the overgrown Sago palms are gone and you can see the front of the house. One day there will be a walkway, pretty plantings, and a picket fence, and of course the house painted, and restored. Dave found the shutters for the house in a shed behind the Love Shack. We are thrilled to have found them!

Brett and his big machine pulled out all the overgrowth

Even the Love Shack looks bigger

Clearing it all away from the house

The yard looks a bit forlorn and rough and huge. Another guy is going to come by and smooth it all out and take away more debris. Sometimes things have to be deconstructed in order to build them up again. One day pretty plants and a picket fence in front and nice driveway will be in place.

In the meantime Dave is nearly done cleaning out his house in New Orleans, and moving his things to storage in BSL. His brother drove over from South Carolina to help with this last big push. The record breaking August heat hasn't made it easy for them.

I'm still packing at my house. Right after both our houses close on the 23rd of August, it will be my turn to get my things to storage in BSL. Our little shop in Antiques Maison will be ready for us this weekend to place a few things and to stage. I'm also teaching tango this coming Sunday in Biloxi, invited by local teacher there Percell St. Thomass. We're running on fumes and happiness.

As ever, thank you Charlie Pettway our broker who has become a friend, for her excellent referrals for the workmen we need.

Update

Update
It's been a whirlwind...

We closed on our beach house a month ago. That was the easy part. Since then both of our houses in New Orleans sold in record time. While this is wonderful, it also puts a lot of pressure on us to move. And we have no place to live since the beach house is basically a bit of a ruin right now.

The buyer for my house has been a dream. She loves my house, paid over ask, accepted the inspections without me having to do repairs or give money back, and is letting us stay in the house rent free 45 days after the closing. Both our houses close on August 23. So that means we have until the end of September to move.

Dave is desperately trying to finish a big contracting job Uptown in New Orleans, so he can start work on the Love Shack (the 300 sf cottage on our property) and have it ready for us to move into at the end of September. In the meantime, we rented storage space in Bay St. Louis, and he has been shuttling furnishings from his house to it. The plan is to empty is house first, then do mine.

So I have been packing and packing and packing. And selling off some furniture. It is daunting. The original plan was for us both to downsize tremendously. But then something else happened to make us hold on to our various collections of antique and vintage furniture and bric-a-brac. We acquired a prime booth in the best antiques mall in Bay St. Louis!

We will be shopgirls!

Nearly three years ago I was doing an interior design project in BSL, and I did a fair amount of shopping for the client in this antique mall. The ladies there were super friendly and helpful. Later I brought Dave there, and we all had many fun cordial interchanges. By coincidence both these women are leaving BSL! I was happy for their new changes in life, but a little bummed because I really wanted to hang out with them, One of them had the prime booth in the store, and I asked her about getting it in a kind of joking way, and she said, it's yours!

Dave looking over the contract for the space in the antique mall

Dave and I always talked about doing some kind of shop together, making our years of hoarding collecting pay off as an activity for our semi retirement. So here it is, the universe providing once again. I also was invited to teach tango in a fabulous art space nearby.

I will be teaching tango at Studio Waveland

So in the span of a month we have a new house, we sold two houses, we have to move, we have to renovate a place to live in, and we became shopgirls. These Saturday a guy has been hired to clear out all the brush and trash trees in the yard, and remove vines off the Love Shack. Dave's brother is coming from South Carolina to help him move, so hopefully Dave's house will be cleared out this week.

We've walked around the yard (I got bitten by fire ants last weekend) and the house several times, talking and planning, often taking our planning sessions to the local cafes and ice cream parlor. All in all things are humming along. We are both anxious to keep things moving forward, and still happy with our decision to take on this major challenge .

The Mockingbird Cafe in BSL

I celebrated my 70th birthday a couple of weeks ago, with lunch with dear friends and also a huge tango party. I truly do feel like 70 is the new 30.

Inspiration Wednesday

Inspiration Wednesday...
Every Wednesday I'll post about what inspires me
Ken Fulk inspires me... 

The first time I laid eyes on our beach house I was already mentally furnishing it. I started making floor plans and lists of things we would each bring from our edited possessions. Dave and I have different decorating styles, though we do have a love of old things in common. He never met a piece of vintage or antique brown furniture he hasn't dragged to his house in the past 25 years, and I proscribe to the Sister Parrish axiom that a room should never have more than two pieces of brown furniture. He likes white walls; I like color and pattern. Dave has suffered my doll house for nearly three years, living with my point of view. Now I want to combine our styles, use his beloved family furniture and his oriental rugs and lovely things.

Ken Fulk combines antique and vintage pieces. Dave has brown furniture and oriental rugs. When I see a room like this I know I can make it work and love it too. Our walls and ceilings are original bead board, and we plan to paint them white.

Our living room

Our living room - My lime green silk drapes on these windows!

Susanna Salk and Stacey Bewkes have one of my favorite blogs: Quintessence. Their "At Home With" tours are inspiring and personal. I particularly loved one they did about the Provincetown home of Ken Fulk. I used it as a jumping off point for a client's beach house I worked on a couple of years ago. I didn't want to do cutesy coastal. I wanted a collected look, like a sea captain bringing home treasures, or a sea cottage like the on in the old movie "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir".

This Ken Fulk entry hall is great. Ours is a center hall with an opportunity to use chests, tables, and maybe my French settee. It will be a gallery to display our too large art collection. It's painted yellow now, and maybe I'll do the yellow too.

This is the center hall in our house with the bead board painted yellow - I would choose a better yellow; I have a lovely red killim rug that was in Alberto's office that is now languishing in the attic. It would look great in this entry hall.

Ken Fulk gallery wall inspiration for our center hall

So now I have a chance to combine all the things Dave and I have into a really comfortable and cozy and unique space for the two of us. Each of us will have to let certain things go, but we plan to pass them on when we open a pop up shop at the beach once we're settled.

The Ken Fulk dining room has an incredible hand painted mural. We don't have a real dining room, but Dave has a lovely brown old round table that would fit in our planned large eat in kitchen.

Our kitchen - It will be reworked to make room for a dining table

Ken Fulk kitchen is so not generic or cookie cutter

Our kitchen even has an old stove like the one in the Ken Fulk kitchen

Ken Fulk kitchen

My mantra of art, books, flowers will be invoked. I look forward to marrying our possessions together. His grandmother's Governor Winthrop secretary and oriental rug with my lime green silk drapes. You get the idea. Our 1890 Queen Anne center hall cottage will lend itself nicely to it. I love what Ken Fulk did in Provincetown, combining vintage and antique and some modern things. I love his use of color. I love his art work and his sense of whimsy. He's quirky and stylish.

Brown furniture is growing on me

Dave has a brass bed he loves and after seeing what Ken Fulk did, I think it will be perfect for our new house

More brown furniture love

I will have to downsize my book collection

I love wallpaper but the bead board walls won't allow it

I can add print with fabric

One of our two bedrooms

Ken Fulk does great vintage bathrooms

Flowers and art forever

Quirky love

One of the two of our bathrooms has some nice old fixtures

It feels great to be blogging again and sharing with all my fellow decor mavens! You can now follow this blog. There's an email link on the right hand side...

Ken Fulk I love what you do1

Show Me the Money...

Things are moving ahead. Our offer as accepted and we close on July 17. Getting financing is always interesting, and in our case more so. We don't have deep pockets, and at our age 30 year mortgages are amusing at best. So a second mortgage was procured on my New Orleans house, so we can pay cash for the beach house. Dave's house is on the market, and mine will go on the market this week.

The death of Dave's favorite aunt slowed us down a bit. She was 96. A road trip to South Carolina to say farewell to her gave us plenty of time to talk and reflect on life. Even though it made the logistics of all of this more pressing, it was a welcome time together.

While looking for some legal documents buried in an under-counter space in my dining room, I came upon boxes and boxes of photographs that constitute my old portfolio of work for my defunct event design business that closed nearly 25 years ago. The great purge has to commence, and I am screwing up my courage to throw out these remnants and relics of my glory days in New York.

There are so many of the mixed emotions expected with this type of decision and move. My inner voice screams, "Are you nuts"? But nuts or not, events are propelling us forward.

We stopped at the beach house on our way home from South Carolina. The listing agent was there still showing it, as the official status is "pending and still showing". We were a little annoyed that he was showing "our house", and drove away to the ice cream parlor to cool our tempers. We went back, and they were gone. Who else but us would want this wreck? We walked the property and took some measurements in the 98 degrees heat. We talked about the things to do first. There's still a lot of overgrown trash trees and vines that need to be removed from the enormous yard and off the love shack (the additional small guest cottage on the property), and that will be the first thing to do.

The Love Shack, the guest cottage on the property

We also scoped out storage units. We will have to store the furniture we are bringing, and things we will sell in a vintage shop we plan to open, while the house is being renovated. If both our houses sell quickly we will have no place to live, another daunting prospect for sure. The plan is to get the 300 square foot Love Shack renovated for us to live in for the duration of the big house restoration. Time is not on our side. Dave has a major project he is working on in New Orleans that must be completed before he can start working on our little nest. 

Hello Again...

It's been over a decade since I blogged beyond picture collecting on Instagram. I'm not young. In fact I turn 70 in a few weeks. I was once told how you start a decade out is how that decade will go, so be in a good place in mind, body, and spirit.

So as I prepare for the next decade with my new life partner Dave, we have decided to make a huge change. He has been in New Orleans for 40 years, and I have been here for 20. And though it's daunting we have decided to sell our homes and move to the beach. It sounds glamorous, but the beach is in Mississippi a place we never dreamed of living. My girlhood fantasy was to grow old in Paris, sporting a Colette look and sipping champagne with young people in cafes.

So this is the beginning of a new saga, starting with the the house we found after looking at houses in Bay St. Louis for nearly three years. BSL is just 59 miles from New Orleans. It was pretty much wiped out by Hurricane Katrina, but has come back cuter than ever as an arty little town that New Orlenians have made their darling. Consequently real estate prices are high.

We found a wreck of a house built in 1890. We both love old houses. Dave is a contractor that only works on restoring old houses. The BSL house survived Katrina. The tin roof blew off but was restored. The property did not flood. It was one of three houses built around the same time on a very short street right across from an active railway track. In fact there are only three houses on this street. Let's just say it's not for everyone.

But we love it. It's just under 1500 square feet, a very simple Queen Anne cottage with a modest center hall. I always said I would only move again if it was to a center hall house. There's a mother-in-law shack at the back of the property.

It will mean a lot of downsizing and ridding of two households with lifetimes of possessions. Stay tuned for some really good tag sales.

Our first hurdle is financing in time to to make an offer. We are both debt free except for the mortgages we hold on our homes. But on paper no bank wants to loan us money because of our advanced age and modest incomes. So now we are pursuing a private investor to give me a bridge loan using my house as collateral until my house sells. The good news is my humble little piece of swamp has appreciated very nicely over the years.

So this is truly the beginning, starting with getting the money. Stay tuned for hopefully many more blog posts about Dave and Valorie's big adventure.

Just across from the front yard

Hello again - The real estate agent snapped this of me - Do I look happy hugging this old house?